In a nutshell: The joy of City of Angels – given a stupendous revival at the Donmar by Josie Rourke 21 years after its West End premiere – is that it’s bitterly amusing about the treacherous LA movie industry but serves as far more than a one-note satire.

In a nutshell: Love’s Labour’s Lost, that early play groaning with dense verbal wit, has been yoked in the RSC’s repertoire to that familiar beast Much Ado About Nothing – here restyled Love’s Labour’s Won, a title that might refer to a lost work but was likely an alternate name for an existing play, perhaps Much Ado.

In a nutshell: The young Shakespeare, suffering from a bad case of writer’s block, finds the inspiration to write Romeo and Juliet when he falls in love with Viola De Lesseps, the daughter of a wealthy merchant, little realising that she is leading a secret life of her own by disguising herself as a boy actor in his own acting company. This is the best British comedy since One Man, Two Guvnors and deserves equal success.

In a nutshell: Rightly raved about at Hampstead Theatre in May, and cannily whisked into the West End where it could run forever and a day, the Kinks’ musical Sunny Afternoon is a blazing triumph – as guaranteed to transport you to a state of paradisiacal bliss as the fabled sight of a Waterloo sunset.

In a nutshell: This wildly successful adaptation of Michael Morpurgo's novel of the same name tells the story of the First World War through the eyes of a horse. It is powerfully moving, has wow-inducing ingenuity and is a real joy.

In a nutshell: Patrick Barlow's delightful spoof of John Buchan's classic novel and Hitchcock's famous 1935 film adaptation follows the adventures of expatriate Richard Hannay, as he attempts to avoid murder, outwit secret agents and woo beautiful women – a dizzyingly entertaining show that never outstays its welcome.

In a nutshell: Catherine Tate adds levity in this razor-sharp revival of Stephen Sondheim's contentious musical about those who are angry, frustrated or deluded enough to try and kill the American president.

Where: National TheatreAddress: South Bank, London, SE1 9PXUntil: April 13

In a nutshell: At the heart of both book and play is a minor spat that spins out of control. Diligent teenage “sorter” Abdul Husain (Shane Zaza), his shack-proud mum (Meera Syal’s wry and dry Zehrunisa) and ailing father Karam (Vincent Ebrahim) embark on home-improvements that enrage their envious, one-legged neighbour Fatima (Thusitha Jayasundera). The latter sets fire to herself and then blames it all on them, ensuring the family swiftly face a Kafkaesque nightmare of injustice and incarceration. While consistently enjoyable, the show resists the temptation to make the spectacle of poor people in desperate competition look exotic; the design is knowingly economical and the most eye-catching moment comes when a torrent of empty water-bottles cascades down.

In a nutshell: Dominic Dromgoole delivers an incandescent revival of The Changeling that utilises the natural, waxy lighting source at this indoor Jacobean theatre in ways that make the darkness and shadow, the murk and mayhem, of Middleton and Rowley’s 1622 tragedy more palpable, more unforgettably primal.

In a nutshell: Moses Raine’s funny, touching and continually involving domestic drama, set in a Moscow flat, recalls a past of state eavesdropping and pervasive suspicion and sets that against a world in which much has changed, but not masses – where family tensions and mistrust obliquely reflect a body politic that allows little room for personal freedom.

In a nutshell: The little disguised aim of The Fever, Wallace Shawn’s oft reprised 1990 monologue, is that discomfort should seep through the pores and be felt on the bone; that we get infected by a trembling sense that something is very wrong with the way the world works and that we are to blame. For 90 minutes, an unnamed figure – affluent, cultivated, well-travelled, of no openly declared employ – confides his (it could equally be, and has been, her) thoughts. He’s in a nocturnal hotel room “in a poor country where my language isn’t spoken”. Outside an uprising is in progress, but the speaker is experiencing his own civil war, contending with a fever that makes him shiver and a deeper existential nausea. He’s revolted by - alienated from - his life and his wryly detached, blistering confession circuitously traces how he came to this crisis-point.

In a nutshell: As the minutes tick by in Robert Hastie’s exquisitely nuanced production – some 115, with no interval – and the play moves in disconcerting leaps across a four-year period, following the same diminishing all-male circle of six friends and acquaintances, the unseen Reg becomes a sort of running gag with knobs on. My Night with Reg is the most artificial and the truest, the funniest and most searing play to be found anywhere on the London stage. It matters absolutely that all the characters in it are gay, and it matters not a jot.

In a nutshell: With Boyzone singer Ronan Keating in the lead role, you absolutely get a sense of an ordinary man nursing a wounded heart and finding himself cautiously, conflictedly attracted to Jill Winternitz’s appealingly forthright single mum. This Dublin-set hit musical is perfect for date nights and the broken-hearted.

In a nutshell: The “Scottsboro Boys” were nine poor young black youths – aged 13 to 19 – who were hauled off a freight-train in Jackson County, Alabama on March 25, 1931 and charged in nearby Scottsboro with gang-raping two white female passengers. The accusations were false but the youths had to endure years of imprisonment, and multiple, flawed trials in which guilty verdicts were handed out willy-nilly. Though all finally avoided the electric chair, their lives were ruined; the saga helped spur America’s civil rights movement. All this, encapsulated in under two hours of potent song and dance, makes for necessary viewing.

In a nutshell: A suited office worker, played by fellow comic Tim Key, arrives at the foot of a tree which, it transpires, he believes to be the rendezvous for a picnic with a woman he hasn’t seen for 10 years, and with whom he wants to get back together. She hasn’t showed and this strait-laced bloke is sent into even more of a flap when he realises there’s a chap high in the branches who has heard every word of his harassed phone-calls, and expletive-filled rebukes to self, and who, moreover, insists that he has been living up there for nine years.

In a nutshell: An absolute joy of an evening, built paradoxically on the despair, rejection, heart-break and jealousy that comes with love betrayed. Making an impressive musical debut, Tamsin Greig plays the leading role of the suddenly dumped TV actress Pepa. Angular, gawky, klutzy, she has us hooked on every astonished and distressed look, every charming smile and legible emotion, oscillating between resignation and rage – and when she sings, as she does often, the power of her voice drags you into the vortex of her predicament about the faithless Ivan (Jerome Pradon).

In a nutshell: Marianne Elliott’s award-laden production about 15-year-old protagonist, Christopher, who exhibits a constellation of quirks that are recognisably on the autistic spectrum – but his behavioural problems are also a metaphor for the solitariness of the human condition – resumes at the Gielgud Theatre.

In a nutshell: It’s hardly a crime against the humanities that Jerry Herman’s musical about a likeable Jewish refugee and a stuck-up, anti-Semitic Polish army officer – jointly trying to escape the Nazis – has remained unperformed in Europe for 36 years since its Broadway premiere. But Thom Southerland’s lively shoestring revival, which squishes a show originally seen in a 1700-seater auditorium into a 50-seat fringe cubbyhole, successfully persuades you that The Grand Tour is worth taking for a spin.

In a nutshell: The story of the landmark strike by women sewing machinists at Ford’s Dagenham plant in 1968 – protesting the sexist and penny-pinching decision to classify them as lesser skilled workers – has gained renewed topicality.

In a nutshell: The controversial new play about the life and death of Diana, Princess of Wales and her relationship with James Hewitt, is patchy and the concept often feels too tricksy for its own good.

In a nutshell: This stage adaptation by Mike Kenny, previously seen at a disused Eurostar platform at Waterloo and now transferred to a purpose-built venue with railway track near King’s Cross, makes E Nesbit's book’s shortcomings all too evident.